To The Teddy Bears on my Shelf
By Isabel Yabes, 10
I guess it’s only right for me to say sorry.
I am sorry.
You know me.
You see me every day, even if from afar, smiling sadly as I grow up and away from those times when all I did was giggle and chat endlessly with you. Growing away from when I’d stumble over words and my feet, then picking myself up without much more than a grin and a shrug.
Now I hurry about, taking endless papers with me and trailing rushed grins behind. Nowadays, I overthink things— even conversations and my odd little smiles. These days, I question who I am and where I belong.
You can see how times have changed.
But there are days when I think they haven’t.
Sometimes I stare at an old drawing framed on the wall and remember the exact words I said to Mama when I gave it to her with a toothy— rather, toothless grin.
Sometimes I think about the countless hours I’d spend making blanket forts in the family room while screeching the lyrics to Wicked’s Defying Gravity.
Sometimes I wake up thinking I’m still seven, when my only cares were hovering around Gen and dragging you three along on my journeys to my grandparents’ house, our dog Dante following closely behind.
And when I look around my room, the room I painted myself when I was in sixth grade, I see little bits of my old self lying around— that one book I never let go of, the sweater I loved so much that I stretched it out to fit my current size, even the four journals I wrote in but never returned to.
These little vestiges make me wish times were the same.
I know you do, too.
So I say thank you. Thank you for being a constant, an anchor to the younger, more carefree me. Thank you for holding onto the memories so I don’t have to be afraid to make new ones with new people. Thank you for letting me hold you for all those years.
Thank you for loving me.
And now I say goodbye for I don’t know how long.
One day, I’ll forget. It’ll turn into another… and another… and another— yet another reason for me to say sorry.
But you know me.
Someday, I’ll remember again. Someday, I’ll have more to tell you.
I guess it’s not really goodbye… more like a ‘see you later.’
So… to all you who have raised me, the wide-eyed, big-mouthed little girl, thank you.
One day, someday, I’ll see you later.